Those two five-letter names have meant much to thousands, from the time they werechildren until they were middle-aged, or past middle-age. Macaulay’snephew and biographer wrote of Kate Terry (the eldest of the Terry sisters) in1852 : ‘It is almost worth while to be past middle life in order to haveseen Miss Kate Terry in Arthur’ : countless others, born in mid or laterVictorian times, feel the same, in regard to Ellen Terry, as they recall thebeautiful voice and acting which made real and living to us Ophelia, Portia,Juliet, Beatrice, and Desdemona, and it is pleasant to reflect that those of amuch younger generation have had the advantage of enjoying the greatness andvariety of her gifts in the parts of Lady Macbeth (when she made us understandthe relentless conscience and the human element yet alive in Lady Macbeth), ofCordelia, of Imogen, and of Volumnia.

To very many of us, her acting was not only a first revelation of Shakespeare,but, often, a realising of human character one could never have realised orfound out for oneself. It is difficult to believe she could ever have had suchfar-reaching influence as an actress, if she had not been the woman she was; fornone other of the Fine Arts so much as the art of acting seems to call for sucha keen perception of the tragedy and the humour of life, of the sorrows of theworld, its happiness, and its mirth, for all that we mean by the vague termssensibility, and imagination.